Recent market research (e.g., Nielsen three-screen report) indicates that users are consuming more content, not just on television but also online. The data also shows that a third of online content consumers hook up their personal computers (PCs) to their television sets (TVs) in order to watch that content. This underscores the fact that users want the convenience and diversity of online content—but with the lean-back, shared viewing experience of a big screen TV.
Notwithstanding this burgeoning demand for online content that is TV-accessible, the options available for users today in terms of bringing online (or internet or web) content to their TV typically involve the use of additional hardware and software bridges, e.g., HDMI adapters to connect PCs to TVs, or the purchase of additional ‘set-top-box like’ consoles such as AppleTV or Playstation3. Yet the implementation of such options can be costly. Further, such solutions also bring added complexity in terms of software configuration and setup, making them attractive mostly to early adopters or tech-savvy consumers.
The market research also indicates that X-shifting trends (i.e., consumers watching time-shifted, place-shifted or device-shifted content) are on the rise, driving the adoption of “Video-On-Demand” (VOD) solutions that cater to user convenience in content consumption. Because cable operators offer VOD features in their subscriber offerings, this is not only familiar to most consumers but gives them utility without the direct hardware costs and setup complexity.
Yet conventional VOD solutions are not appropriate for allowing consumers to meet their above-described desires for TV-accessible online (or internet/web) content, for several reasons. In particular, storage and processing resources available at VOD providers are necessarily finite and expensive, making it impractical for the operator to store every possible content item available online. Further, conventional VOD content tends to be carefully selected and otherwise processed so as to make the most desired content available to users and to make the best use of the aforementioned limited storage and processing resources available to VOD providers. For example, conventional VOD systems often employ catalogs that are determined in advance by content providers or operators and then “pitched” to head-ends. Although such conventional selection/processing is suitable for conventional VOD content, it is not suitable in relation to online content given the volume of content involved, the rapid evolution of and changes in such content, and rapid changes in user demand for various content. In particular, conventional VOD systems are often slow to respond to sudden changes in demand (peaks and valleys) as often can occur in relation to online content for any of a variety of reasons. As a result, conventional VOD systems may fail to contain or offer large amounts of content that are suddenly in-demand, or may reserve valuable storage and processing resources for content that is past its prime from a consumer demand perspective.
It would therefore be advantageous if an improved system or method could be developed that facilitated the delivery of TV-accessible online content to users and, in at least some embodiments, overcame one or more of the limitations associated with the provision of content by way of conventional VOD systems particularly so as to allow for both large volumes of online content to be made TV-accessible to users and/or also to enhance the degree to which the online content made TV-accessible is likely to be desired by users or otherwise is most suitable for being made TV-accessible.